Beauty and the Bounty Hunter by Lori Austin Read Free Book Online

stared at him for several moments. Would she leave right now, refusing his protection and help? It wouldn’t be the first time. Then her shoulders slumped, her hands unfurled, and she turned her head away. “The plan?”
    “You will travel with me. We will make our way to Denver City.” He had been there as a child; he knew the place well.
    “Why Denver City?” she asked.
    “Because that is where your dead-or-alive body must be delivered and where the incentive will be paid.” He tapped his forehead. “We will be smart. No one will search for Cat O’Banyon in my wagons. No one who matters will pay us any mind. We will discover theidentity of the one who wants you dead—” Alexi spread his hands.
    “Then I’ll kill him.”
    The redhead, whose name was Hazel, proved to be quite the shrew. When she returned and discovered Alexi in the process of leaving—even though he’d promised to take her along—she threw a screaming, stomping, cursing fit.
    “Take her,” Cat said. He was going to need a bedmate and it wasn’t going to be Cat. Just because she had been once didn’t mean she would be again. She didn’t think she could be. Alexi was too—
    Cat broke off the thought before it could form—complete with imagery—in her head. Alexi was a lot of things, most of them
too
something. She didn’t need to get specific, even with herself.
    Cat watched the argument in amusement until Hazel snatched up Alexi’s empty glass and threw it at Cat’s head.
    “I’ll meet you at the wagon,” Cat said, and left Alexi to tell Hazel she would not be joining them.
    Alexi didn’t care for theatrics. Unless they were his own.
    The Mississippi River, dotted with barges and boats of all shapes and sizes, flowed briskly beneath the moon. Alexi’s wagon had not only been moved but also refashioned into a plain covered wagon once more. No one who had seen it earlier would recognize it now as the count’s conveyance.
    Cat approached warily. She knew better than to sneak up on—
    “Miss Cathy.” The low, slow voice came out of the darkness an instant before he did.
    “Mikhail.” Alexi’s right hand. She’d heard them refer to each other as brothers. She’d never been sure if they were truly of the same blood or merely lifelong friends. Alexi’s explanation of the relationship changed with the direction of the wind. According to Mikhail they’d been together since childhood.
    Cat had her doubts that Alexi had ever been a child.
    Mikhail, on the other hand, was a little boy in a giant’s body. He could break thick tree limbs in two as easily as he broke legs; he could crush a head with as little effort as he crushed an egg. Whatever task Alexi asked of him, Mikhail performed.
    “How have you been?” Cat asked.
    “I missed you when you went away.”
    People weren’t nice to Mikhail, something Cat had never understood. Why would you poke a stick at a man of his size? Unless you wanted to die.
    But Mikhail had a calm disposition; in truth, he never lost his temper, which to Cat only made the violence he committed in Alexi’s name more frightening.
    “I missed you too,” Cat murmured. “But I had to go.”
    Mikhail’s clear gray eyes met hers. “Why?”
    She had never told him about her past; she’d never really told anyone. Not everything.
    “There are bad men. I catch them…”
Or kill them.
“So they don’t hurt anyone else.”
    “Oh.” He nodded. “I remember.”
    Unease trickled down Cat’s back. “What do you remember?”
    “Some folks gotta be punished. You and I are the same.”
    Cat opened her mouth to deny this, then snapped it closed. Justice was justice, especially out here. Just because Cat brought the bad men to meet a fate decidedby a court—unless, of course, they forced her to decide their fate herself—and Mikhail meted out justice decided by Alexi didn’t mean she was right and he was wrong. Sure, Alexi was playing God, but then…
    Wasn’t she?
    Cat contemplated their sole